Played a game against a hard AI to test out the AR buffs. The AI surprised me, it wasn't supposed to be a challenge. Maybe it's just the way the map was setup or hard AIs have been made harder but anyways, on our first engagement, he was Vasari, not sure if rebel or loyalist ( never checked ), had a Kortul Devastator vs my Discord Battleship, which alone is suicide, but he also had several more frigates than I did.
Knowing I could not win that first engagement, I still held the line until I captured the planet which we were both fighting for and immediately had both a repair bay and temple of communion built.
The map was very spread out with little actual planets and many uncoloniseables, so I wanted to spread my culture early to prevent him from capturing too many of the valuable planets.
Keeping with the early culture, I also upgraded the now 150% shield regen and phase missile block, seeing as I was facing Vasari.
Once those upgrades kicked in, the tide turned. While still not packing enough firepower to take down the Kortul which kept regenerating his own shields, my Discord was now durable enough to face off to the Kortul and his frigates while I built factories at my new planet and started pumping frigates into the battle, and eventually won.
The now 15% ressurection and reanimation rates also came in handy when some small force slipped to my undefended worlds and I found I had a small force of frigates and corvettes waiting at my homeworld to save the day. Considerably more ships than I would have expected to find with the old 10%.
TL:DR I like the Advent Rebel buffs.